Deeplinks Blog posts about Video Games

"Your console has been banned." For many gaming enthusiasts, perhaps nothing is more unnerving than the prospect of losing the ability to duel with friends and strangers over the Internet for hours on end. Yet earlier this month, this fear became a reality for many Xbox owners when Microsoft banned a large number of consoles from its Xbox Live service. The move effectively prevents the machines from playing games online, and according to reportssofar, the ban allegedly only affects consoles that have been modified by users in order to play pirated games.

When you buy World of Warcraft (WoW) in a retail box, do you own the copy of the software you bought? That's the critical legal question facing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a pending appeal in MDY v. Blizzard, and the question that Public Knowledge took on in an excellent amicus brief filed with the court earlier this week.

The term "machinima" (machine + cinema) has been coined to describe movies made using video games. In addition to being an inspiring new "film" genre, it's also at the cutting edge of many important legal questions at the intersection of copyright, trademark, and contractual restrictions (i.e., EULAs and ToS). At the same time, some video game vendors have begun reaching out to embrace machinima.

On April 24-25, 2009, Stanford Law School will be hosting "Play Machinima Law," a timely conference examining these issues, where I'll be one of the speakers. Recommended!

"Spies' Battleground Turns Virtual," proclaims a headline in Wednesday's Washington Post. The headline alone would raise concerns — after decades of electronic surveillance, what exactly is it about US spies' work that has suddenly turned virtual? But this turns out to be only the first of the many falsehoods, baseless assertions and lame misperceptions that comprise the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity's new fearmongering paper on the dangers of unmonitored civillian communication.

The big news in the machinima world this week has been Microsoft's new "Game Content Usage Rules," which is a license that explicitly authorizes the creation of machinima (and other derivative works) using Microsoft game content. As far as I know, this is the first time a major commercial game vendor has created a "machinima license" to facilitate this exciting new genre. (Check out This Spartan Life's interview of Malcolm McLaren for an example of the amazing things machinima creators are doing using Halo.)